ENGLISH REAPER AND KERALA KANDATHI: A Comparative Study of Wordsworth’s “The solitary Reaper” and Raghavan Atholi’s “Kandathi”

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This paper tries to bring out the possible possibilities of the melancholic cause and history of the Solitary reaper of Wordsworth where in which we trace the elements of solitude and melancholic tone which, of course, conveys the forsaken reality of the subaltern history which doubly marginalised the subaltern woman there by wiping out the existence and identity of a voice which even Wordsworth fails to hear:

Will no one tell me what she sings?

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow¹

In 1803, Wordsworth toured Scotland with Dorothy Wordsworth and Coleridge as his companions. The sight of the reapers harvesting the fields reminded Wordsworth of a sentence in a book by one of his friends: ‘passed a female, who was reaping alone: she sang in Erse as she bent over her sickle; the sweetest human voices I ever heard; her strains were tenderly melancholy, and felt delicious long after they were heard no more.’² The poem was thus inspired partly by the poet’s own experience and partly by that of his friend’s. The subject of the poem is brought forth from the common rustic experience. The poet has also used the literary device of rustic language in order to communicate successfully with the common people along with their everyday life events.

Wordsworth vaguely brings out the hidden information about the melancholy of the reaper and we are not sure about it, though he claims the causes of her melancholic voice. Here, this paper tries to read Wordsworth’s “The Solitary Reaper” under the light of Raghavan Atholi’s “Kandathi”³.

Raghavan Atholi is one of the most important poets and sculptors of Kerala. His poems are unique in their effective interpretation of the lives of Dalits. Raghavan was born in Atholi in 1957 as the son of Thannimel Parotti and Kandathi. He has published five collections of poems-Kandathi (1966), Mozhimattam (Change of Tounge, 1996), Mounashilakalude Pranayakkurippkal (Love Notes from Silent Statues, 1999)-and over 500 poems in Malayalam, some of which have been translated into English and Hindi.

If poetry for Wordsworth is ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotions recollected in tranquility’, for Raghavan Atholi poetry is ‘not the worship of beauty either.’⁶And ‘poetry, for me, is neither complaint nor salvation. It is a historical commitment.’⁷ In his poems, we hear the voice of the supressed and a conscious approach to bring out the realities of the subaltern history where he concentrates on the historical laxity executed by the upper class/caste people of power. He claims that in his poetry he allocates the space for the voice of the downtrodden through which he would be able to recreate the forsaken history of the subaltern. He laments and screams, he says, ‘the sorrows and problems that have been left unspoken for centuries, the people who’ve been denied a voice to talk about them- it is for them I lament, that I scream.’⁸ Thus he has made his stand on this discourse crystal clear. He says, ‘Inside me I have the lament of our ancestors as well as the sorrows of our contemporaries. When I write, they sit beside me, and I forget myself and my surroundings.’⁹ this is what we find in almost all of his poetries, a conscious approach to bring the dalit ancestry under the light of reality along with their day to day life events and the exploitation from the side of upper class identities.

The possibility of reading Wordsworth’s “The Solitary Reaper” along with Raghavan Atholi’s “Kandathi” gives us the scope of comparative literature, i.e., the possibility of tearing out the cover of a hidden history and story of a class that was blacked out by upper class/caste representations in the generic academia. In ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, Spivak suggests that it is impossible for us to recover the voice of the ‘subaltern’ or the oppressed colonial subject. In addition, she takes seriously the issue of the subaltern and the desire on the part of postcolonial intellectuals, to highlight oppression and history, thus to provide the perspective of oppressed people. Thus, it is the intellectual who must ‘represent’ the subaltern. In her work, she allocates a vast space for woman subaltern agents with narration of pre-independence Indian Hindu matrimonial ceremonies and the condition of women after the death of their husband that they practiced sati- a ritual in which the widow will sacrifice herself in the pyre along with her husband’s dead body. Spivak points out the doubly marginalised situation of the third-world subaltern women agents in her work. It is not just the third-world women who are on the agenda of the discourse but the first-world women also come under the title ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ - the discourse of ‘representation’.

The cautious I have just expressed are valid only if we are speaking of the subaltern

woman’s consciousness- or, more acceptably, subject. Reporting on, or better still,

participating in, antisexist work among women of colour or women in class oppression

in the First World or the Third World is undeniably on the agenda.¹⁰

Spivak concludes her work by placing the subaltern agents in a situation of in-betweenness:

The subaltern cannot speak. There is no virtue in global laundry lists with ‘woman’ as a

pious item. Representation has not withered away. The female intellectual as

intellectual has a circumscribed task which must not disown with flourish.¹¹

Will no one tell me what she sings?

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

for old, unhappy, far-off things,

and battles long ago:

or is it some more humble lay,

familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss or pain.

That has been, and may be again!

Whate’er the theme, the maiden sang

as if her song could have no ending;¹²

Though Wordsworth poetically narrates or recollects the event of the past, we feel the laxity of the voice of the solitary reaper about whom he praises. Of course, the voice of the reaper is not brought forth before us directly, but the poet tells us something about the theme of her song, vaguely enough for the readers not to get in to the life of the girl.

Here, we will read the reaper under the subaltern discourse in which the poet, who represents the elite class, never tells us the life and social realities of the time especially about the feudal social system and the penury conditions of the English subaltern agents. The subaltern woman agent in the poem represents the whole English downtrodden people who were made mute and voiceless forcefully by the feudal landlords. Their existence and identity in English society had been underwritten by the voiceless representation through the writings of the intelligentsia. She has been represented here, but is not given the voice of her own; instead, the poet gives her the voice and the theme of possibilities in which the English society failed to hear the social realities of the downtrodden people in their society.

Let us analyse the voice of her song along with the narration of the social realities of the dalits in India.

There, by the garbage in the street,

she sits. Sweating.

Guts burning with hunger.¹³

Behold her, single in the field,

yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself;¹⁴

The beginnings of both the poems are alike in the tone and narration. In the poem “Kandathi” we find the woman, but she never speaks, instead the poet who is a dalit speaks for her. However, in the “Solitary Reaper” we hear her voice, but is made voiceless by the poet; after all, the poet forgets himself in the beauty of her voice, not in the story of her song. ‘Kandathi’ is the voice of the ‘solitary reaper’ whose life has been exploited by the landlords:

Lives bleached threadbare

like fibre thrashed from

coconut husk, rotten

lives ground into mush

like beggar’s gruel, crushed

under the rushing feet

of a frightened mob.

Her parched throat cracked

amid cries of pollution

forbidding water

from common wells.¹⁵

This is the fact that lies behind the melancholic voice of Wordsworth’s ‘reaper’. Again we find the cause of solitude and melancholy of ‘solitary reaper’ in ‘Kandathi’:

Furrows ploughed

and seeds sown,

watered

with sprouting tears;

…..

generations that staggered and fell,

sons gone astray,

…….

Whose granaries did they fill?

……

the withered faces of

famished babies,¹⁶

Whatever the theme may be, our ‘solitary reaper’ continues to sing as if it has no end, Wordsworth writes:

Whate’er the theme, the maiden sang

as if her song could have no end;¹⁷

He is right, there is no end for her sufferings because none has heard her and even if someone like the poet might have heard her , he would have made her voice voiceless, i.e., the theme of her song is irrelevant for the poet who go after the beauty of nature. But, the poet like Raghavan- for whom the poetry is ‘not the worship of beauty either’ and ‘neither complaint nor salvation. It is a historical commitment.’- hails over Wordsworth at least in the matter of fact.

The comparative study of the products of the romantic age and the products of the dalit literature gives us a golden chance to turn the light on the hidden reality and history of the downtrodden. Since it has a universal appeal and applicability the works of dalit literature cannot be restricted in to the limited realm of reading, it is not just in India or Kerala we have the subaltern agents, but everywhere around the Globe. The work of Raghavan itself is an example of such a universal appeal:

I don’t think I write dalit poetry. I am a dalit and I write universal poetry. I don’t think

my poetry is to be confined to kerala or even india. It is for everyone around the world.

that is what I mean by universal poetry.¹⁸

REFERENCES

1. William Wordsworth, “The Solitary Reaper”
2. Songs for students: a selection of poems, in William Wordsworth, “The Solitary Reaper”, p.14,(Macmillan India limited, 2007)
3. No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, Dossier 1: Tamil and Malayalam, Edited and Introduced by k. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), p. 345, Kandathi is the name of the poet’s mother. It denotes a woman who is of, or works in, the rice field (kandam). The plural pronoun ‘aval’ used in Malayalam, which in translation becomes the singular ‘she’, makes this a representation of the experience of all dalit women during slavery.
4. Ibid, p. 347, the poet is probably referring ironically to Papanasini, the sacred river in north Kerala.
5. Ibid, p. 347, a wild variety of rice used in funeral rites.
6. No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, Dossier 1: Tamil and Malayalam, Edited and Introduced by k. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), in ‘The Poet with a Forest Fire Inside’, Interview by Pradeepan Pampirikunnu, trans. By Jayasree Kalathil, p. 340
7. Ibid, p. 341
8. Ibid, p. 341
9. Ibid, p. 341
10. From C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Macmillan Education: Basingstoke, 1988, in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, pp. 271-313, part IV
11. Ibid, part IV
12. William Wordsworth, “The Solitary Reaper”
13. No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, Dossier 1: Tamil and Malayalam, Edited and Introduced by k. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), in “Kandathi”, Trans., T. M. Yesudasan, p. 345
14. William Wordsworth, “The Solitary Reaper”
15. No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, Dossier 1: Tamil and Malayalam, Edited and Introduced by k. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), in “Kandathi”, Trans., T. M. Yesudasan, p. 346
16. Ibid, p. 347
17. William Wordsworth, “The Solitary Reaper”
18. No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India, Dossier 1: Tamil and Malayalam, Edited and Introduced by k. Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), in ‘The Poet with a Forest Fire Inside’, Interview by Pradeepan Pampirikunnu, trans. By Jayasree Kalathil, p. 343

KANDATHI

Translated by T.M. Yesudasan

There, by the garbage in the street,

She sits. Sweating.

Guts burning with hunger.

In her hut,

Wick-lamp burnt dry,

She sits. Alone,

In the dark,

Meal untouched.

She curses the sun

That left, carrying fair day

Into darkness.

Still weeding at sunset

For the until-dusk wage, see

How she crushes stone

With bare hands.

Furrows ploughed

And seeds sown,

Watered

With sprouting tears;

Men yoked with bullocks,

Generations that staggered and fell,

Sons gone astray,

Clans made extinct,

Treacherous goals,

Tilled fields,

Bountiful seeds,

Whose granaries did they fill?

Waist cloth pulled tight

Over a half-filled stomach,

An old crone, bent double,

Haggard,

Furious.

By the slaver’s field they sit,

Tears dropping on

The withered faces of

Famished babies,

Nursed with milk and tears.

Finally they waste

Away as slimy sweat,

Adorning the scriptures

In negative inscriptions.

Lives bleached threadbare

Like fibre thrashed from

Coconut husk, rotten

Lives ground into mush

Like beggar’s gruel, crushed

Under the frightened mob.

Her parched throat cracked

Amid cries of pollution

Forbidding water

From common wells.

She my mother,

She who gave birth.

Today she needs

No cremation shroud,

No dip in the wicked deep.⁴

She needs the light that went out

And some burning oil.

Today she needs

A handful of sheer earth

Untainted by sin

And varinellu⁵

Unstained

By blood.

She, my birthmother.